A plane lands on a slick tarmac one rainy Paris evening.

Reds and blues the plane's lights flicker in the haze while it taxis to the gate.

From the terminal, two men watch the aircraft slow to a halt through large, pained windows.

They're wearing fine Italian leather shoes, loose dark slacks, and Macintosh overcoats.

They match only one's bigger and muscle bound.

He's the one with a fedora that doesn't quite fit.

The other is live, an athletic, with a bushy mustache atop a weary face.

He wears a flat cap, and his posture says he's much stronger than his build suggests.

The year is 1957, and these two men wait, watching, while passengers and crew a light.

Most passengers get little more than a fleeting look as they pass, unless they appear to be

a man traveling alone.

In that case, they get a little more attention.

The two observers are looking for defining characteristics, a unique gate, a certain

carriage.

The moves and gestures of someone who's lived a particularly cruel life.

There's one final guy at the end of the line.

Blue suit, dark red tie, the uniform of an airline steward.

He's polished with closely cropped hair and a clean shave.

He's also young, early 20s, and he moves with a practiced indifference to the world's

machinations.

It's not so much of a walk as it is a slide across the cheap carpeting of the terminal.

That's true.

...